Aircraft pilots are subject to many factors that can lead to physical or mental fatigue, drowsiness, and inattention. Thus, commercial airline pilots are required to follow relatively strict work-rest cycles. For example, as a general rule, for domestic flights within the United States, commercial airline pilots may be limited to eight hours of flight time during a 24-hour period. Despite these requirements, pilot fatigue remains a potential concern. General aviation (GA) pilots do not have mandated work-rest cycles. Nonetheless, GA pilots can also experience undesirable fatigue while flying.
In view of the above, researchers have been exploring the idea of detecting pilot fatigue in real-time. Presently, however, the systems that have been developed to detect pilot fatigue in real-time are either too intrusive or too expensive to be considered practical. For example, systems that rely on electroencephalogram (EEG), electromyography (EMG), or periodically completing simple mental tasks can be relatively intrusive, and flight deck mounted eye-tracking systems can be relatively expensive.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method for detecting pilot fatigue that is non-intrusive and is relatively inexpensive to implement. The present disclosure addresses at least this need.